In contemporary building construction, it is commonly necessary to fasten sheet metal components together at a construction site. For example, relatively thin sheet metal material is commonly used in building construction for wall studs, floor channels and joists, and these components, which are typically 0.020 to 0.060 inches in thickness, must be joined together. Presently, the most common method for securing these components is by self-drilling screws. Such self-drilling screws must be hand fed into a hand tool, and thereafter threadably advanced into the construction components. This procedure, particularly hand feeding the screws to the tool, is time consuming and inefficient. As a result, construction time and costs are unnecessarily increased.
Moreover, even after self-drilling screws are threadably driven into the construction components, they frequently function inadequately as fasteners. There are many reasons for such shortcomings. First of all, self-drilling screws tend to break relatively thin metal materials as they are advanced into the material. Furthermore, the effectiveness of a self-drilling screw as a fastener is dependent upon the technique and skill of the tool operator. Many times a tool operator will either underdrive or overdrive a screw. If underdriven the screw may be inadequately advanced into the joined components. Alternatively, if overdriven, the screw may be loose, allowing relative movement between the joined components.
Although self-drilling screws have a multitude of shortcomings, they are used extensively in actual practice since other prior art fastening systems have an even greater number of disadvantages for on-site applications. For example, nonself-drilling screws require the separate step of drilling a hole in the metal or other construction material prior to advancing the screw. Similarly, the hand held riveting tools of the prior art require preformed and aligned apertures in components to be joined or require the use of the so-called blind sided two piece rivets. Accordingly, these other fastening systems require additional cost, time, operator skill and equipment.
Self-piercing, single piece rivets are also well known in the art and have proved to be highly effective and efficient fastners for situations where both sides of the fastened workpiece are accessible. However, due to the substantial force required in driving a self-piercing rivet and the substantial impact received by the riveting tool when setting such rivets, prior art devices for driving and setting such single piece self-piercing rivets have been large, heavy and semi-permanently located in factories or other permanent locations. Hence, these self-piercing rivet devices have not proved suitable in the past for use at temporary or field construction sites.